Blog - Page 18 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Lord’s Supper: A Roman Catholic and Reformed Evangelical Dialog (Video)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:13:38-05:00March 31st, 2015|Categories: ACT 3, Biblical Theology, Church Tradition, Missional-Ecumenism, My Christian Unity Story, Personal, Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Sacraments, The Church|

Who should participate in the Lord’s Supper? How frequently should we observe it? What does this meal mean? What happens when we eat the bread and drink from the cup? What do Christians disagree about and what do they hold in common? These and other questions are explored in my book, Understanding Four Views of the Lord’s Supper. This volume in the Counterpoints series from Zondervan allows four contributors to make a case for the following views: • Baptist view (memorialism) • Reformed view (spiritual presence) • Lutheran view (consubstantiation) • Roman Catholic view (transubstantiation) All contributors use Scripture to present their views, and each responds to the others’ essays. This book helps readers arrive at their own conclusions. It includes resources such as a listing of statements on the Lord’s Supper from creeds and confessions, quotations from noted Christians, a resource listing of books on the Lord’s Supper, and discussion questions for each chapter to facilitate small group and classroom use.

After this book was published in 2007 I engaged with my friend Fr. Thomas Baima in a […]

The Church: Ever Ancient

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:13:38-05:00March 30th, 2015|Categories: Culture, Current Affairs, Missional Church, The Christian Minister/Ministry, The Church|

The church is one of the only places in culture where people of multiple generations make our lives together. This is the way God wants it. Augustine addresses God in prayer this way: “Beauty ever ancient, ever new.” I think here of an early church martyr named Polycarp who was ordered by the Romans to curse Christ. “I have followed him eighty-six years and he has done me no wrong. How can I curse my king who saved me?” I think too of John the Baptist leaping in his mother Elizabeth’s womb. The church stretches from the not-yet-born to those on the cusp of the next life.

This is also really difficult. Younger and older folks often struggle to understand one another. We all know this in our own families. Why would we think the church would be any different?

Yet it is crucial that all ages become God’s church together. Scripture promises that Israel’s “sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young shall see visions” (Joel 2:28). This is fulfilled in the […]

Difficult Men: Why Did Cable Television Produce So Many Great Works of Popular Art? Part 2

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:13:40-05:00March 26th, 2015|Categories: Books, Culture, Current Affairs, Film, Personal, Television|

Brett Martin identifies a first burst of literary energy in 1950s television (when the medium was young) and a second that came in the 1980s (when the forward-thinking television executive Grant Tinker’s MGM Enterprises begat the groundbreaking Hill Street Blues). These are followed by the “Third Golden Age,” beginning with The Sopranos. This story is at least half the content of his book. He uses it to set the stage for understanding what followed in shows that may be even better than The Sopranos. The Emmy Awards, given for the best programming in television, are now routinely given only to cable shows such as these, all of which have garned an incredible number of such awards. The New York Times book review of Martin’s books says that he “writes with a psychological insight that enhances his nimble reporting.” Again, I have to agree completely.

Martin takes the reader (listener) behind the scenes of this cultural shift and provides extensive reporting based on interviews and good research. He gives you “never-before-heard” stories and reveals how cable television has distinguished itself […]

Difficult Men: Why Did Cable Television Produce So Many Great Works of Popular Art? Part 1

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:13:40-05:00March 25th, 2015|Categories: Books, Culture, Current Affairs, Film, Personal, Television|

As a true fan of what Brett Martin calls “The Third Golden Age” of television I devoured his new book, Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Man Men and Breaking Bad. I devoured the book by listening to Martin’s work as an audio book. Listening to a book in its entirety is a first for me. This one was very easy to listen to since I used long driving stretches to work thorugh it in only a few days. The essential core of Martin’s story was easy to grasp. The actual reader, Keith Szarabajka, was also fantastic, making the aural experience deeply satisfying. (I am told my own book, Your Church Is Too Small, is poorly read in its audio version since the reader apparently does not understand important words and thus mispronounces a number of them. O bother!)

In the late 1990s, and early 2000s, the landscape of television began a transformation with a wave of new shows, all featured on cable channels. The reality is that […]

From John F. Kennedy to John Kerry: Evangelicalism’s Shifting Position on the Catholic Church

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:13:40-05:00March 24th, 2015|Categories: ACT 3, American Evangelicalism, Current Affairs, Missional-Ecumenism, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, The Church, The Future, Unity of the Church|

Currently, at First Things magazine, Dr. Timothy George, Fr. Thomas Guarino and Dr. Carl Trueman are posting reflections on the ecumenical working group Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) in light of their twenty years of existence (see http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/03/evangelicals-and-catholics-togethertwenty-years-later).

The creation and success of ECT was made possible due to a larger shift in evangelical perceptions of Catholicism that had occurred over the course of about sixty years. For me, nothing captures this shift better than the about-face reflected in two Christianity Today editorials addressing the two Roman Catholic presidential candidates, John Kennedy and John Kerry. While the first editorial warns evangelical voters of the candidate’s Catholic faith, the second laments that his faith isn’t strong enough.

When John F. Kennedy announced his run for President of the United States on January 2, 1960, he thrust into the political spotlight something that proved to be as controversial as any policy position, namely, his Catholicism. For many evangelical Christians at the time, this fact alone rendered him a problematic candidate for the office of the presidency.

By the time Kennedy ran for president, there was in place a long history of negative […]

“Sanctuary” – A Chicago ABC Television Broadcast on the ACT3 Network Story

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:13:40-05:00March 23rd, 2015|Categories: ACT 3, Missional-Ecumenism, Television, The Church, The Future, Unity of the Church|

ABC television, Channel 7, in Chicago broadcast a special twenty-eight minute program called “Sanctuary,” that was devoted to the ACT3 story and to my life and work for missional-ecumenism. This program aired yesterday, March 22. Today you can see the entire program on our home page as well as here on my blog and Facebook page. I hope that you will be moved to pray for unity and the work that I do for ACT3 Network. We need many friends who will: (1) Pray for me and this mission, and; (2) Support us financially as we bring the word of Jesus from his John 17 prayer for unity to a wider circle of churches and leaders around the world.

One great way to help us is to subscribe to the ACT3 Weekly via our website. Each Monday you will get a short article as well as news and prayer requests. Go to www.act3network.com and sign up.

Real Humor is Always Good for the Soul

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:13:40-05:00March 19th, 2015|Categories: Humor|

I love religious humor, good humor. Sometimes such humor, if it is really good, can make a rather profound point. There are two bits of humor that I recently overheard that made me laugh while they also made a great point.

First, did you hear about the man who was an agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac?

His problem was that he sat up all night wondering if there really was a dog!

Second, did you hear about the aliens who landed in the Bible Belt?

The first persons to meet them were zealous Christians who told them all about the story of Jesus.

They replied to these Christians by saying, “He’s already visited our planet and we threw him a great party and everyone celebrated.” They asked the Christians: “What did you do when he came to your planet?”

Living in Community, Living in Love

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:13:40-05:00March 18th, 2015|Categories: ACT 3, American Evangelicalism, Church History, Church Tradition, Culture, Discipleship, Friendship, Love, Missional-Ecumenism, Personal, Prayer, Renewal, Spirituality, The Church|

Yesterday, I wrote about the desert fathers and mothers. One of the most prominent of them all was Antony of the desert. After reading Jesus’ words to the rich younger ruler Antony, sensing the spiritual deadness of his own soul and of the church of his time, retreated to the desert to seek God with his whole body and soul. For the next twenty years he wrestled with (in his own words) demons and the constant rigors of ascetic practice. His sole desire was to draw nearer to God. (He was not undertaking a “self-help protect” so that he might be saved by his good works!)

When Antony’s friends begged him to leave, and then dragged him, away from the desert twenty years later, his health was superb and the power of his ministry was unmistakable. Antony shows me what new life really costs–everything! He also scares me to death and he makes me tremble before the deep spiritual reality that he knew during and after the desert. But he also gives me hope. I’ve was in a […]

The Wilderness and the Desert: Images for Christian Living?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:13:41-05:00March 17th, 2015|Categories: Biblical Theology, Church Tradition, Discipleship, Patristics, Personal, Spirituality, The Church|

Two of the most lasting images used by the Christian church to describe the spiritual life, especially among the desert fathers and mothers, are wilderness and the desert. Had I not learned these two images in the early 1990s I am not sure I would have profited so deeply from my own spiritual journey.

First, the feeling of God’s absence became real to me during the late 1990s and all through the first decade of this century. I had known God’s presence in some remarkable ways previously but around 1998 this sense of his presence began to recede. I felt what the ancients called abandonment. I felt like I was wandering in a wilderness, a desert. I felt God was testing me. I felt a devastating absence for prolonged times. I read the account of my Lord suffering in the wilderness and identified with his heart in some ways.

Second, these images suggest an arid spirit but in reality I learned the opposite to be the case. I was being powerfully renewed in the desert. In Exodus, when the […]

Suzanne McDonald: The Power of Real Ecumenism

By John Armstrong|2015-03-10T07:43:07-05:00March 16th, 2015|Categories: ACT 3, Missional-Ecumenism, My Christian Unity Story, The Church, Unity of the Church|

Last year ACT3 hosted the Lausanne Movement’s Catholic-Evangelical Conversation in Mundelein, Illinois. We will host this same event again on September 2-5 this year. During our meeting last year ACT3 hired a videographer to film each of the participants talking about the power and importance of unity. A few weeks ago I posted a segment of one of those interviews with Dr. Suzanne McDonald, theology professor at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. Today we hear the second of her excellent two-part response.

These interviews capture the heart and soul of the mission of ACT3 Network.